Professor X
Track Record When Worlds Collide tournament - Won first round in tag team with Gladiator, beating Black Adam and Metamorpho History Early Years Charles Xavier was the son of wealthy nuclear researcher Brian Xavier and his wife Sharon. After Brian Xavier's death in an accident, Sharon married his colleague Dr. Kurt Marko, whose son by a previous marriage, Cain, bullied the young Charles. Kurt favored the gentle, smart Charles to his own son. Charles' telepathic powers began emerging when he was still a boy, and as he grew older he learned to control them. With his powers he had discovered that Kurt cared only about his mother's money. Kurt quickly grew neglectful of Sharon, driving her to alcoholism, and abused both Sharon and Cain. Charles once used his telepathic powers to read Cain's mind and explore the extent of his psychological damage, which only led to Cain becoming more aggressive toward him and Charles feeling Cain's pain firsthand. Sharon died soon after, and a fight erupted between Cain and Charles that caused some of Kurt's lab equipment to explode. Mortally wounded, Kurt dragged the two children out before dying. A brilliant student intent on undertaking graduate studies, he entered England's Oxford University, where he met and fell in love with a young Scotswoman named Moira Kinross. Their passionate discussions on genetic mutation gave way to an equally passionate romance. It had also been hinted that Mister Sinister interfered with Moira's and Xavier's relationship as he was posing as a professor at Oxford at the time. Charles and Moira planned to be married, but after finishing his work at Oxford, Xavier was drafted and sent to Asia during the Korean War. There Xavier and his stepbrother Cain served in the same unit. Xavier witnessed how Marko found the mystical ruby in the temple of Cyttorak that transformed him into the superhuman Juggernaut. Xavier also served alongside Shadowcat's father Carmen Pryde on search and rescue missions. Deeply depressed when Moira broke off their engagement without explanation, Xavier began traveling abroad after leaving the army. (He later discovered that Moira married her old boyfriend Joseph MacTaggert, who abused her.) While in Cairo, Egypt he met the young pickpocket Ororo Munroe and battled Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King, the first evil mutant he had ever met. This meeting led to the visionary Xavier's decision to devote his life to protecting humanity from evil mutants and safeguarding innocent mutants from human oppression. Xavier next went to Haifa, Israel to meet with the head of a clinic for traumatized Holocaust victims, where he fell in love with the catatonic Gabrielle Haller, whom he awoke, and became friends with a man calling himself Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, a volunteer. Magnus and he held lengthy debates hypothesizing what would happen if humanity was faced with a new super-powered race of humans. While Xavier was optimistic, Magnus' experiences in the Holocaust led him to believe that humanity would ultimately oppress the new race of humans as they had done with other minorities. The two friends revealed their powers to each other when they fought Nazi Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA agents, who kidnapped Gabrielle because she knew the location of their secret cache of gold. Magnus attempted to kill Strucker but Xavier stopped him. Realizing that his and Xavier's views on mutant-human relations were incompatible, Magnus left with the gold. Lehnsherr would years later become his greatest enemy and rival, Magneto. Charles stayed in Israel for some time, but Xavier and Haller were unaware when he left that she was pregnant with his son, who would become the autistic mutant known as Legion. They separated on good terms. In a strange town near the Himalayas, Xavier encountered an alien calling himself Lucifer, the advance scout for an invasion by his race, and foiled his plans. In retaliation, Lucifer dropped a huge stone block on Xavier, crippling his legs. Xavier was freed by Sage, who had heard his telepathic cries for help. Amelia Voght, a young American nurse, made cheering him up her pet project and helped him recover during his convalescence in Bombay, India, wherein the two fell in love. But she then left him as Scott Summers moved into the X-Mansion, believing the best solution to the "mutant problem" being for mutants to lay low. Charles tried to force her to stay with his mental powers, but immediately ashamed by this, let her go. He worked with fellow mutation expert Karl Lykos, as well as Moira MacTaggert again, who built a mutant research station on Muir Island. Apparently, Charles had gotten over Moira in his travels to the Greek island of Kirinos. Xavier renewed his friendship with Moira MacTaggert, who was now a renowned geneticist, and they began discussing the idea of founding a school for mutants. Xavier discussed his candidates for recruitment to his personal strike force, the X-Men, with Moira, including those he passed over, which were Kurt Wagner, Piotr Rasputin, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, and Ororo Munroe. Xavier's first student was the 11-year-old Jean Grey, who had been traumatized when she telepathically experienced the emotions of a dying friend. Over the years, Charles made a name for himself as geneticist and psychologist, renowned enough that the Greys were referred to him when no other expert could help their catatonic daughter, Jean. Xavier helped Jean recover and taught her to use her telekinetic powers. Xavier also trained Tessa to spy on Sebastian Shaw. X-Men Xavier later met with Fred Duncan, an FBI agent investigating the growing number of mutants. Xavier told Duncan of his plan to locate young mutants and enroll them in his "School for Gifted Youngsters", using his ancestral mansion home as a base to train them to use their powers for humanity's benefit. The base included subterranean medical labs, a training facility called the "Danger Room", an aircraft hanger, and Xavier's mutant detection device code named "Cerebro". Over the following months Xavier assembled his original team of "X-Men": Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast, and Jean Grey, who took the name Marvel Girl. Notable menaces included Magneto, now a mutant supremacist and terrorist, and anthropologist Bolivar Trask's mutant-hunting Sentinels. Years later, when most of his original students were captured by the mutant Krakoa, Xavier sent another team comprised of Moira's students, one of whom was Cyclops' long-lost brother Kid Vulcan to rescue them. After the team freed Cyclops and Kid Vulcan revealed their connection, the team was killed. Cyclops escaped, but when he made it back to Xavier, Xavier wiped the traumatizing knowledge that his newfound brother had died saving him from Cyclops' brain. He then assembled another new team of X-Men including Banshee, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Wolverine to rescue the others on Krakoa, and no one else knew anything about Moira's students. Lilandra, princess of the alien Shi'ar race and the woman he shared an intense psychic bond with across the vast distance that separated their two planets, came to Earth to implore Xavier for his help against her mad tyrannical brother D'Ken. He instantly aided her by deploying his X-Men. When Jean Grey returned from the Savage Land to tell him that all the X-Men were dead, he shut down the school and travelled with Lilandra to her kingdom, where she was crowned Empress. Xavier dreamt of her and Lilandra knew they were soul mates. Xavier and Lilandra fell in love, and for a time he lived on Chandilar, the Shi'ar throneworld, as her consort. He had no other choice but to challenge the Shi'ar Imperial Guard to a duel over the fate of the Phoenix, when she destroyed a Shi'ar world. Xavier emerged victorious with help, however the Phoenix committed suicide. Jean Grey was believed dead. After the apparent deaths of the second team of X-Men, Xavier, encouraged by MacTaggart, took on a new class of mutant students, whom he named the New Mutants. The alien race called the Brood had secretly implanted an egg within Xavier's body. MacTaggart and the X-Men's spacefaring allies, the Starjammers, saved Xavier by transferring his mind into a newly cloned, somewhat younger body in which he could once again walk; he felt like a "whole man". Charles met with former lover Gabrielle Haller on Muir Isle and discovered that he was her teenage son's father. The autistic boy, David, suffered from multiple personality disorder and had vast psionic powers like his father. After helping him and his team to escape from David's mind, Xavier promised he would always be there for him. In subsequent months, Xavier suffered physical injuries and psychic strains that left him on the brink of death due in part to a hate crime wrought by anti-mutant students at Columbia University, where Xavier was an adjunct professor, and an attack by the children of Baron von Strucker at Magneto's court trial. Lilandra and the Starjammers took him into outer space where they used Shi'ar technology to restore him to health. After an extended sojourn in space with the Starjammers, Xavier finally returned to Earth. Both the original and second teams of X-Men reassembled under his leadership, along with new recruits like Gambit and Jubilee. Xavier led the X-Men against the Shadow King, only to have his spine broken in battle, leaving him crippled and confined to a wheelchair once more. While holding a mutant rights speech, Xavier was nearly assassinated by Stryfe, being infected with a fatal techno-organic virus, but was saved by none other than Apocalypse. As a temporary side-effect he gained full use of his legs and devoted his precious time to the youngest recruit on his team, Jubilee. Since the X-Men were all now highly trained adults, Xavier renamed the school in his mansion The Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. He took control of a private school, The Massachusetts Academy, and made it the new School for Gifted Youngsters, where yet another new class of young mutants, Generation X, was taught. Onslaught In a battle with Magneto, Xavier lost his temper over his old friend ripping the adamantium from Wolverine's body and used his mental powers to shut down Magneto's conscious mind. In the process Xavier's mind was inadvertently infected by the evil within Magneto's psyche. The result was that the dark sides of Magneto's and Xavier's minds combined and physically manifested themselves as the nearly invincible entity called Onslaught, who usurped Xavier's psionic powers. America's greatest super heroes narrowly defeated Onslaught, who appeared to perish. However, to ensure that Xavier never again spawned a being like Onslaught, Dr. Valerie Cooper of the United States government took him into custody. Although Xavier was willing to serve as a prisoner of the United States government, he was appalled when it turned him over to the custody of Bastion, head of the anti-mutant Operation: Zero Tolerance. Xavier was eventually freed and found by Cerebro. He briefly led the Brotherhood during this time. He then left Earth to train a group of mutant Skrulls called Cadre K. When Mystique blew up Moira MacTaggert's laboratory complex, fatally wounding her, Charles went to the astral plane to meet with her and retrieve information on the cure to the Legacy Virus, but after gathering the information he did not want to leave her alone. If not for Jean pulling him back, the professor would have died with his first love, who stated she had no regrets. After the Legacy Virus was cured, Magneto assembled an army on Genosha. Xavier went to try and dissuade him, but it took an interim X-Men team to stop Magneto, who had crucified Xavier in Magda Square, and former lover and disenchanted Acolyte Amelia Voght to free him. Going Public Xavier regathered his X-Men as a public team and created the X-Corp in light of the incidents with Cassandra Nova Xavier, his 'evil twin.' She had revealed his mutation to the world, something he needed to do but did not want to sully his reputation over. In the wake of Cassandra Nova's attack on the Shi'ar, Lilandra had gone insane and tried to assassinate Charles on a trip to the X-Corporation branch in Mumbai. Lilandra, believing that too much disaster had come from the Shi'ar's involvement with the X-Men, annuled her marriage to Xavier. Stepbrother Juggernaut defected to the X-Men once Xavier reached out to him while he had nowhere to go. Cain redeemed himself, and the brothers came to understand one another. Shortly thereafter, Kuan-Yin Xorn seemed to reveal himself as Magneto. However, Xavier was apparently aware that the real Magneto was still on Genosha. Traveling there, he tried to start a rebuilding effort with several other mutants. When Magneto brought the comatose Scarlet Witch, he also began to try to help her. Xavier briefly returned to help Cyclops's team with Danger, whom he revealed was a sentient entity kept in the Danger Room to help make it a unique and realistic training setting. After mutant Layla Miller restored the memories of some of the X-Men and Avengers, they headed to Genosha where they discovered that Magneto erected a memorial garden for Xavier commemorating his death. They were horrified until Cloak faded into the grave and discovered there was no body inside. After a battle, Scarlet Witch again used her powers to restore reality and, as a slight against her father, caused 91.4 percent of mutants to lose their powers, leaving the mutant race on the brink of extinction. With reality restored, Xavier was still missing and the X-Men were unable to detect him with Cerebro. Deadly Genesis The truth about Xavier sending Moira's students to Krakoa all those years ago was finally discovered when an energy-mass comprised of all the mutants' powers revived Kid Vulcan, now known simply as Vulcan, and in a rage he attacked the X-Men, causing Xavier to come out of hiding; his legs had been restored to him after the House of M, though he was no longer a mutant. Vulcan made Xavier tell the X-Men what he had done. After Vulcan was defeated and flew off into space, Cyclops told Xavier that he was no longer wanted at the X-Mansion for what he did, though some of the other students were more forgiving, including Beast. Even though Xavier was no longer welcome at the Institute, he nevertheless formed a new team composed of Darwin, Havok, Marvel Girl, Nightcrawler, Warpath and Polaris for the express purpose of tracking down Vulcan before he could enact his vengeance against the Shi'ar Empire. In the midst of a coup involving Vulcan and the Shi'ar royal family, Xavier was imprisoned and briefly tortured, and then was set to be thrown into the M'Kraan Crystal. After he was rescued Professor Xavier regained consciousness and discovered that the M'Kraan Crystal had restored his mutation, and he now maintained both his telepathy and his ability to walk. He then began a search for his old colleague Magneto. His membership in the Illuminati gave him torment when the Hulk came for revenge, and made him steward of the Infinity Mind Gem. Messiah Complex His relationship with the X-Men became even more strained when Professor X tried to get involved with the first new mutant baby since M-Day , but Cyclops refused his help. Understanding he had to act on his own, Xavier helped Cable secure the baby and find an escape route. After the final battle had taken place with blood shed and Cable jumping into the future with the baby, Bishop fired a shot to kill Cable, but instead it hit Xavier in the head. Xavier survived the bullet impact, though he suffered lingering damages to his mind and memories, while his telepathic abilities seemed uneffected. Despite Xavier's limits, he was trying to rebuild himself and his connections. Some were no longer as trusting of Xavier as before, including Scott Summers, though Wolverine had sought out Xavier to help him free his son from the Hellfire Club's designs. It remains to be seen how well Xavier would be in rebuilding his connections with his former students and friends. Dark Reign After convincing Exodus to disband the Acolytes, he was approached by Norman Osborn for unknown purposes. Following their encounter, Xavier was taken to H.A.M.M.E.R.'s West Coast base, a restructured Alcatraz Island and slowly stripped of his telepathic powers through the machinations of Dark Bast. Eventually joined by Beast, who had been arrested during a riot, he attempted to convince him that he was the real Xavier in order to warn him. Meanwhile Osborn recruited Mystique to impersonate Xavier in public. During the Dark Avengers' arrival in San Francisco to enforce martial law and squelch the anti-mutant riots occurring in the city, Mystique, posing as Xavier, publicly denounced Cyclops' actions and urged him to turn himself in. Emma Frost managed to detect the real Professor X, later helping Emma Frost to enter the Sentry's mind. However, after Emma worked to free the Sentry of the Void's influence, a minute sliver of the entity itself remained in her mind. Xavier quickly told her to remain in her diamond armor state to prevent the Void from gaining access to her psi-powers. Strengths & Weaknesses Powers Professor X possesses vast psionic powers and is at least an alpha-level mutant: Telepathy: able to read minds and project his own thoughts into the minds of others within a radius of 250 miles (on Earth). With extreme effort he can greatly extend that radius. When synced with Cerebro, he can connect to every mind on a planet. Whether or not this also relates to all sentient lifeforms or specifically with Humans and Mutants is not known. * Telepathic Illusion: ability to create realistic telepathic illusions and cause people to experience events which are not actually occurring. * Telepathic Cloak: can mask his presence from being detected by others. His abilities can at times go undetected or be counteracted by other more powerful telepaths depending on their level of skill in using their own psi abilities. He can extend these defenses to others around him as well. * Psi Link: ability to develop a mental link with any person which remains as a connection to that individual. * Telepathic Camouflage: ability to mask himself, and other peoples' presence from those around him. Can telepathically disguise himself, making his appearance to those around him quite different (changing the appearance of clothing, as well as more involved disguising). * Mind Blast: ability to place large amounts of information in another's mind. * Mind Control: ability to control the minds of others upon mere concentration. This power can allow him to completely shut down several peoples' minds, making it appear as if time has stopped. * Mind Possession: ability to possess the mind of another, and use that being's body as his own. * Mind Alteration: ability to alter the minds of others by force of will. * Mental Amnesia: ability to cause loss of particular memories and amnesia in another person or even in a group of people. * Psionic Shield: ability to erect a psychic shield for protection of himself and of other minds. * Psionic Blasts: can project psionic force bolts which have no physical effects but which can affect a victim's mind so as to cause the victim pain or unconsciousness and can even kill an adversary. * Astral Projection: ability to Astral Travel and communicate with others astrally through his own will, or through contact with the thoughts and memories of others. In the astral realm, he can use his powers to create "ectoplasmic" objects. He cannot engage in long range astral projection on the earthly plane. * Mental Detection: can sense the presence of another superhuman mutant within a small but as yet undefined radius of himself by perceiving the distinctive mental radiations emitted by such a being. * Mind Transferal: able to transfer both his mind and powers into other host bodies if his own physical body could be somehow killed. * Absorb Information: ability to quickly process and store information, by mental transference. Telekinesis (Formely)' Professor X also possesses low-level telekinetic abilities, though these seem to no longer exist. They seem to be part of his genes however, as Cassandra Nova has telekinetic abilities and is basically a clone of Xavier. Phoenix Force: Charles Xavier briefly possessed a fraction of the Phoenix Force during his time with the Starjammers. Abilities Genius-level Intellect: A natural genius, Xavier is a leading authority on genetics, mutation, and psionics. He possesses considerable expertise in other life sciences. He is highly talented in devising equipment for utilizing and enhancing psionic powers. Xavier is also quite the masterful tactician and strategist, effectively evaluating situations and devising swift responses; he has, on numerous occasions, even fashioned long-term operations as complex as those of adversaries such as Sinister, Magneto, and Apocalypse. Military Training: Charles served in the United States Military, secretly employing his abilities to specialize in search and rescue missions. Expert Fighter: In his travels in the East, he became a proficient hand-to-hand combatant and gained knowledge of pressure points. Knowledge of the body: As an extension of his studies of pressure points, Xavier's knowledge of the body and its energies/chakras has gained him the unofficial degree of a seasoned Zen master, allotting him the ability to keep in the prime of his physique. In spite of his age, he has maintained an impressive Olympic chassis long since before he founded the X-Men and X-Corp, and has kept himself in perfect condition ever since. Strength Strength of a normal man his age and size who engages in moderate regular exercise, mostly in his upper body. Weaknesses Paraplegic (Formerly): Professor X has been normally unable to walk due to spinal damage, originally suffered while combating Lucifer. Dark Side: Xavier was shown to have a dark side, a part of himself that he struggles to suppress. Perhaps the most notable appearance of this was the entity Onslaught, which was a physical manifestation of that dark side. Also, Onslaught was created in the most violent act Xavier claimed to have done: Erasing the mind of Magneto. Once the X-Men fought images of the original team, which had been created by what Xavier said was his "evil self... who would use his powers for personal gain and conquest," which he said he was normally able to keep in check. In other instances, Xavier was shown to be secretive and manipulative. During the battle against Onslaught, the X-Men found Xavier's files, the "Xavier Protocols", which detail how to kill many of the characters should the need ever arise, such as if they went rogue. Also it was revealed that when Xavier realized that the Danger Room had become sentient, he kept it trapped and experimented on it for years, an act that Cyclops called "the oppression of a new life" and equated to humanity's treatment of mutants. Later still, a de-powered Xavier was forced to admit that he had sent a group of hastily trained young mutants to Krakoa to save the original X-Men, resulting in their deaths. Because one of the mutants was Cyclops' brother Vulcan, Xavier erased Cyclops' memory of the event. He further manipulated the rescue team of new X-Men by making them think the meaningless noises the island made were intelligible speech—evidence that the island was alive—to match the new memories he had given Cyclops. Xavier had multiple secrets that he hid from the X-Men beyond the Xavier files, Krakoa and Danger Room incidents. Since the inception of the X-Men, he created and maintained a network of mutant espionage agents to work in dealings that were too dubious for the public eye of the X-Men, even entrapping Mystique into helping him (even though she killed his dear friend, Moira McTaggert). He had also been part of the secret Illuminati society responsible for shooting Bruce Banner into space. There is also the issue that plagues only the longest of long-time X-Men readers. Throughout the years it had been implied that Xavier had always known about mutants beyond those he chose to be his X-Men. He had admittedly hand-crafted who he picked to be his core team members. This has serious implications however, for instance, it can be implied that Xavier must have always known about "Morlock" mutants, those with severe physical mutations, yet out of the utility of public appeal chose young, physically attractive mutants that he gave a life of privilege (though accompanied with life-threatening missions). Xavier intentionally let some mutants be his vision in Westchester, while others lived lives of horror and daily prejudice on the streets of Manhattan and around the world. Additionally, after the events of M-Day, Xavier was nowhere to be found. Even though he knew that the X-Men were looking for him, that his ancestral home was invaded by Sentinels, and that his school and the mutant community at large were in a state of crisis. He explained that he hid in England during this time out of embarrassment over losing his abilities and his role he played in the House of M saga. Equipment Hoverchair, Cerebro, Mind Gem Transportation X-Men Blackbird Trivia * Xavier's favourite book is known from the X-Tinction Agenda storyline to be T.H. White's The Once and Future King. Magneto (who apparently shares Xavier's passion for the novel) can be seen reading it at the beginning of X2 while in prison, and also paraphrased White's famous lines about territory and war, saying, "When will these people learn to fly?" Also, at the close of the film, Xavier asked his students if they were familiar with the work. * In New X-Men #129, Fantomex mentioned that Xavier is a billionaire with a net worth of 3.5 billion dollars. Category:Comic Book Characters